Nick: Hi, this is Nick Ortner, Creator and Producer of The Tapping Solution and the 2013 Tapping World Summit. I’m so delighted that you’re with us today. Today it’s a real honor to be where I am. I’m sharing this lovely couch in sunny San Diego with a mentor and a friend, Louise Hay. Usually with these kinds of interviews you have a whole long bio. I was doing a little research about what to say about Louise, and the bio is a little bit long for this. I’m holding her book here, You Can Heal Your Life. You might have heard of it. It sold I think at last count 50 million copies.

Louise: Worldwide.

Nick: Worldwide. I’ve got to break this down. Usually we call someone a bestselling author. So you’re a bestselling author, but 50 million copies, do they give you a new title for that?

Louise: I just find it amazing, and I feel I didn’t have anything to do with it. Once I wrote the book a life said, “This book must go out,” and took over.

Nick: How many things in our lives do we want to have happen like that and they don’t? What’s the difference? What did you do differently with this book that other people aren’t doing?

Louise: I didn’t do anything with the book. I just wrote it, and wrote it because I wanted to help more people than I could do in a workshop.

Nick: Louise has helped people around the world with Hay House Publishing, which I don’t know how many books you’ve sold through Hay House Publishing. Do you have that number?

Louise: No.

Nick: Hundreds of millions.

Louise: You’ll have to ask Reed for that.

Nick: Reed knows the answers. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Louise: You’re welcome.

Nick: This is a really special moment for me. The Tapping World Summit, this is the fifth annual one. Every year we just do the same thing that you do, put out content focused on helping people and sharing something that’s really powerful. I know you’ve been doing a little tapping. You know something about tapping.

Louise: I’m a newbie to tapping.

Nick: You’re a newbie with tapping. Did you think it was as weird as I thought it was when I first found it?

Louise: No, I didn’t think it was weird. I thought it was delightful. I said, “Something this simple and easy could really work? That’s great.”

Nick: Right, after so many things that are so challenging for us. Do you remember what your first experience was with tapping? Was it Cheryl sharing it with you, Cheryl Richardson?

Louise: Yes, yes. We did a big tapping on the last session that we had that we spoke together. I got myself in a little trouble, and so she pulled me out of it. She said, “Let’s tap,” and the whole audience tapped with us.

Nick: Beautiful. One of the things that I love about tapping is that we’re taking a look at what’s going on in our lives and we’re taking a hard look, which is a lot of the same thing that happens in your book. We take a look at what’s going on and we tap on what’s called the negative, what I like to call the truth. It’s what’s going on.

Louise: What is happening in the moment.

Nick: What is happening right then. So if your back hurts it’s what’s happening. If you’re angry it’s what’s happening. I get a lot of pushback from people who say, “I’m scared to go look at that. I’d rather just do affirmations right away and I want to be positive.” Of course I know you believe more than anybody in the world about being positive, but why is it important to take a look at what’s happening?

Louise: If you’re going to clean a house you have to see the dirt. If you’re going to clean a turkey pan, if you’re going to do the dishes, you have to see the dirt that you’re cleaning. Then when you do that, then you can do lots of good affirmations.

Nick: Why do you think people are scared to look at the dirt?

Louise: I can’t speak for others.

Nick: Have you ever been scared of looking at the dirt?

Louise: Oh sure, of course.

Nick: I think we all are. One of the things that I say about tapping is that it works so well and so fast. But it requires a degree of honesty and truth, and really taking a look at – it’s oftentimes easier to do the other things in our lives that are important, like exercising and drinking green juice. You do that. I do that. But that’s actually easier to do than it is to say, “Do I finally forgive me mother or father? Am I going to let go of the anger that I have?”

Louise: Do I admit that I was part of it?

Nick: Yeah, absolutely. Tell me a little more. You’ve done a little bit of tapping with Cheryl. We did a little bit of tapping on some neck pain and that kind of thing. Why do you think it works? What’s your understanding of what’s going on with it?

Louise: You’re touching the body. So you’re obviously touching the right places, the meridians, which is sending one signal to your body. Then you’re doing it in a positive manner that sends another signal to the mind. Somehow it works, and I haven’t a clue. But I don’t have to know.

Nick: I know. I’m right with you. I just finished a book for Hay House that’s being published in April.

Louise: What’s it called?

Nick: It’s called The Tapping Solution. It’s not as pretty as this, but it’s a good looking book.

Louise: If you talk to Reed we might make it prettier.

Nick: You think it’s fancy and pretty? We’ll see. I’ve spent the last ten years using tapping and not knowing exactly what works and different theories. In the book I’ve done a lot more research to find out what’s the real science behind it. Not because we necessarily need it. You and I are kind of like we’ll do whatever.

Louise: I call them my inner D.

Nick: There you go. There’s a certain population that wants to know what’s the Western science. The latest research is pointing to the fact that when we’re doing this tapping on these meridian points we’re sending a calming signal to the amygdala, which is that fight or flight response center of the brain. As you well know, a lot of what we deal with on a daily basis is that stress response, that fight or flight response, there’s something that’s coming up.

Louise: Fear.

Nick: Fear. A lot of the work that you teach talks about you can hear your life going back in the past and thinking about your parents and your childhood and the things you haven’t let go of. Why is it so important to do that in our work? A lot of people say, “I don’t want to look at the past. My childhood was miserable and I never want to think about it again.”

Louise: Well, then it’s very important that you start forgiving because forgiveness sort of wipes the slate clean so that other things can come in.

Louise: I love and adore of myself or I love and approve of myself. That’s to me like the mirror work that I do. We’ll have people do it also, is to look in the mirror and look into your own eyes. Start with something really simple but difficult like, “I love you. I really, really love you.” Most people can’t do that at all because it’s just too painful. They have all these messages back here that say, “You’re no good. Besides, your makeup isn’t on right or, “You forgot to shave today,” or something. But once you can do that, if you do it over and over again for awhile it’s like you connect on a different level with that inner child who’s been waiting for years and years and years for you to acknowledge it. Something happens, and I couldn’t tell you what it is, but I have learned that people who do their affirmations in front of a mirror make much quicker progress than other people.

Nick: Yeah, I hear that.

Louise: It pushes through.

Nick: What I can see, it brings up so much stuff. What people can do when they do that mirror work, if something specific comes up like, “I’m not good enough about this,” after they’re done doing the work they can go and tap on those issues. So sort of combine both together. You do the mirror work it brings up the things that are bubbling. Or maybe you can even tap in front of the mirror. Maybe that will be the next innovation, to tap and say affirmations in front of the mirror.

Louise: Yes.

Nick: Do you want to do a little tapping for the crowd?

Louise: Sure.

Nick: You had a little neck pain the last couple of days, so we did some tapping.

Louise: Yes. It’s better, but we can always do a little more.

Nick: How deep do you want to go?

Louise: Well, how deep do you want to take me?

Nick: For people who weren’t with us, probably the last couple of sessions, let’s talk about the neck pain and what was going on and our conversation. It started as some spasms.

Louise: Yes, it started as some spasms that wouldn’t go away. I was feeling tremendous pressure back here and on my neck. I realized that this went back to a time when I was five years old and my step father used to hold my head under water and he had his thumb in that particular place. My thought was for some reason it’s time for me to let this go. The thing is how to find out how to do it, because I wasn’t doing very well on it. I was just pounding away at myself. That’s been a pattern of mine for a long time. Just before I break through to something really wonderful it’s like I do something in my body.

Nick: To clean up.

Louise: To clean up or maybe just to punish myself one more time. I haven’t figured that quite out. At 86 I’m still willing to go for it.

Nick: Beautiful. Tell me, you said to punish yourself one more time. What does that mean to you?

Louise: As a child I was punished so much. It was a way of life for me and was one after another. When I first entered the metaphysical world I discovered that every single time I did something nice for myself I would hurt my body. It was like I wasn’t allowed to have that goodness, and I had to do a lot of work on dissolving that. Some problems are more sticky than others.

Nick: I’m sure it’s really reassuring for people around the world to hear that Louise Hay, the queen of affirmations, sold 50 million copies of her book, is still doing her work.

Louise: Still, absolutely.

Nick: I think that’s important because we do have a tendency in this society to just want to be fixed.

Louise: Yes, and then that’s it.

Nick: And that’s it. When I get over this problem this will be it. I’ll never have to deal with anything again.

Louise: A lot of us just want to stop when we hit a safe place. You’ve got a bit of money. You’ve got some nice friends. You have a good house to live in. You’re okay. You think, “Alright that’s fine, I’m not going to touch anything else.” But I have watched me, and how life works for me is that when I get to a really good level then it’s like, “Okay, now we’re going to deal with this thing. And there’s another thing.” I’ve learned to just say, “Okay, what do I do?” Instead of, “Leave me alone. Don’t talk to me about that.”

Nick: The neck pain, they’re spasms. So it doesn’t hurt right now, right?

Louise: Not at this moment, no. Not since you walked through the door this morning.

Nick: Which I’m glad it doesn’t hurt.

Louise: Your magic presence.

Nick: I don’t know about that. I’m glad it doesn’t hurt. It’s always easier to tap when we can see a difference. We did a little bit of tapping on what happened when you were five years old. When you think of that memory now, how do you feel? What comes up for you?

Louise: It isn’t as strong as it was. We dropped like 50% in that tapping, so that was good. I’ve done a little by myself, but it’s not the same thing as working with a real pro.

Nick: Thank you. Let’s both close our eyes and just sort of connect. We’ll ignore everybody else out there and we’ll close our eyes.

Louise: They can connect with us.

Nick: Exactly. I want you to think back to that memory if it feels safe to do so. How do you see that memory now? Do you feel tension in your body? Is it a picture you see? Is it just something you remember?

Louise: It’s a feeling.

Nick: It’s a feeling, okay. What’s the feeling?

Louise: It’s a feeling of fear. It’s not the terror that it was, but it’s still there because the child is very helpless in that point and can’t really do anything to get out of it. It’s a trapped situation.

Nick: Where do you feel that fear in your body?

Louise: In here, very much.

Nick: How strong is it 0 to 10?

Louise: Five.

Nick: Five, okay. When we tapped before it was much higher.

Louise: Yes.

Nick: So it’s gone down, okay. Why don’t we do some tapping to move that fear.

Tapping on the side of the hand:
SH: Even though I have this fear in my body
From what happened with my step-father.
Louise: It’s been many years ago.
Nick: So many years ago.
I deeply and completely accept myself.
Even though I’m still carrying this fear in my body
From what happened with my step father,
I choose to release it now.

Even though my body doesn’t want to let go of this fear,
It’s had it for so long,
And it needs it to stay safe,
I choose to release it all now.
Now let’s go tapping through the points:
EB: This fear in my body.
SE: All this fear.
UE: This fear about what happened.
UN: It was so scary.
CH: I felt so much fear.
CB: I was only five years old.
UA: And I didn’t really know what was happening or what to do.
TH: I didn’t know what to do.
EB: The time has passed.
SE: I am safe now.
UE: And I choose to let this fear go.
UN: It’s safe to let it go.
CH: It’s time to let it go.
CB: Letting it all go.
UA: Letting it go now.
TH: Letting it all go now.

Take a deep breath. As always, we tune back in. Tune back into that feeling in your chest and shoulders, and see if it’s shifted at all.

Louise: It has shifted, yes.

Nick: It was at a 5 before. Where would you say it is now?

Louise: Two.

Nick: Two, okay, a dinky little 2. Then did anything come up for you as we were doing that tapping, any other memories or any other feelings?

Louise: No.

Nick: Nothing new, okay. That’s alright. Was the memory very present for you when we were doing the tapping?

Louise: It was dissolving.

Nick: Let’s do this, because it’s only a 2. I feel like we can positive affirmation it out. I’m going to ask you to lead the way because I can’t lead the queen of affirmations, in positive affirmations. Let’s start tapping on the side of the hand. You just give me a positive affirmation. If you were talking to someone else and they said, “I had this trauma when I was five years old and I felt so much terror.” What would be the positive affirmation for that?

Louise: You know you have an angel. We all have angels, and you have a special angel that is your own.
In spite of all that you have gone through this angel has taken care of you and protected you all your life.
You can call on this angel now to help dissolve the rest of this issue.
The rest of this issue, this issue of pain and fear, or being terrorized by life,
this issue of being helpless and not being able to have anybody take care of you,
feeling all alone and frightened.
But you have an angel now, and you know this angel is here. This angel is with you.
This angel will protect you for the rest of your life.
It will dissolve any issues that you’ve been through.
It’s time for you to be free now.
You can run and dance and play, and be who you were meant to be and be who you were born to be.
You are safe now. It’s safe to feel safe. It’s safe to be safe.
It’s safe to let go.
There’s a great freedom and a great love surrounds you, and all is truly well in your life now. And so it is.

Nick: And so it is.

Louise: That was interesting.

Nick: That was beautiful.

Louise: I didn’t know where that came from.

Nick: If you weren’t tapping along with us, I highly suggest you rewind the video and do that tapping because that is really special to have that from you. Let’s tune back into your body, tune back into that fear and see if anything’s left.

Louise: I think it’s pretty much gone. Thank you, kind sir.

Nick: Oh, thank you.

Louise: See, you activated it. We also have it within us to do it.

Nick: That’s one of the things that I love about tapping that I try to impress on people all the time. People get caught up in the language. “You say it so eloquently. You say it so eloquently. What do I say?” Just connecting do the feeling and just speaking out a truth, speaking what’s going on.

Louise: First of all talk about what’s bothering you, what the issue is, and then start putting in how you would like it to be.

Nick: Exactly.

Louise: How do want to feel when it’s through, the tapping session is through?

Nick: You can tap and visualize. You can really connect it with anything. What we’re always doing is just calming the body. You can feel the difference. It’s like taking a deep breath and feeling the meditative space. The tapping just really balances the body and the meridians. To me it’s almost like the affirmations just go in even deeper when you do the tapping with it.

Louise: We can say to ourselves, “I can do it. I can do this. It’s not just Nick that can do it. I can do it too. I can do it.”

Nick: Absolutely.

Louise: Then just start doing, negative first and then positive.

Nick: It’s so important to be empowered. We go to doctors and psychologists and psychiatrists, and there’s absolutely a place for them in our society, amazing people doing great work, but it’s challenging when it’s like, “Oh, I need to go to this person to fix me.” As opposed to going inside. I know that’s what we’re both about, empowering people so they feel that they can go inside and do their own work.

Louise: Do you tap on a daily basis?

Nick: I do.

Louise: You start the morning with a tapping. Do you do it in bed?

Nick: I don’t think I do it in bed.

Louise: You could, though.

Nick: You could, absolutely. I probably need a better wakeup practice than I have now. It’s usually checking my email a little too quickly. But yeah, you can absolutely tap in bed. Tapping before going to sleep is great because a lot of times nightmares and just not sleeping well, all that stuff that’s built up during the day. So we can tap before bed and just let go of the things that happened. It’s hard to go to sleep if you’re angry at something your boss said at two in the afternoon and you’ve been carrying it around all day. Doing the tapping then.

Louise: I think I’m going to try doing it when I first wake up. I have this habit now of I bless my bed and thank it for a really good night’s sleep. But I think I could put a little tapping in there.

Nick: I like it.

Louise: This is all about what a wonderful day this will be, and I’m in good shape and I’m fine.

Nick: Great. Report back to us how that goes. From my personal experience with tapping is right when I first got into it I used it a lot. I basically went to all the things in my past where I hadn’t let go of. It was the bad breakup that was still holding onto something. I like to describe to people because people go, “It’s in the past.” But there’s a difference between some things in our past where there’s just a memory. It happened and we learned the lesson and we move on.

Louise: But some of them our bodies react.

Nick: That’s it. You think about something and you’re like, “I’m still angry at that person I was angry at about 20 years ago. What am I doing?” I tell people that you’re carrying that anger every day whether you think about it or not. It’s affecting yourselves. You know that, and that’s really the work that happens in your life going back and doing that work. I recommend that people, beyond the list of things of if you have something with anxiety here’s a cause from it. The earlier part of the book where it really helps to explore the different things in your life, your relationships, you can use tapping along with that really well.

Louise: I need to give you a percentage of the book.

Nick: Not necessary. You’ve done enough. I did a lot of work in the beginning. Then I got to the place where now I’m always still tapping on things, but they’re different kinds of challenges.

Louise: Then you tap with other people so much too, and that benefits you also. I think every tapping benefits. I’m just learning about this, but I’m starting to –

Nick: To figure out how it all works.

Louise: Figuring it out, yes.

Nick: I do believe it makes a big difference. Most of the time when I tap on a daily basis these days it’s on procrastination.

Louise: Really?

Nick: Yeah. I used it for writing my book. There’s times when you’re writing and it’s flowing, and there’s other times you’re staring at the computer and you’re saying –

Louise: When you procrastinate what do you usually do?

Nick: I’ll either do emails, which doesn’t seem like procrastination but it is because I’m reading the same email 14 times and just staring at it, or going online reading news sites, TV here and there.

Louise: Some people eat.

Nick: I don’t eat. You can use tapping for that too.

Louise: Yes.

Nick: But what I do is I’m staring at the computer and I don’t want to work on this project or the book, whatever. I’ll say, “Even though I don’t want to do this, I deeply and completely accept myself.” Sometimes just that basic tapping will move it. What I love about it is if you do tapping for five minutes you get to the place where you go, “I’m either ready to go into this,” or you recognize, “No. I’ve been writing this book way too much. I need to go for a walk.” But usually what we do is we don’t have any clarity on our decision so we say, “If I go for a walk I’m procrastinating.” So we beat ourselves up for doing the exact thing that we need to do. I find the taping just brings you to a peace, a place of clarity, and then you can make a better decision as to what to do.

Louise: Yes. I think you could also go to the mirror and do a little tapping and say, “What could I do right now to make you feel good, to make you happy?’’

Nick: I like that.

Louise: Yes, because we don’t think about that. We want life to make us happy, but it’s all in here. If you just think about, “What could I do right now to feel better?”

Love yourself and Tap Happy!

Nick: Louise, thank you so much for having me in your beautiful home and thank you for your time.

Louise: You’re welcome. All is well.

Nick: Thanks everybody, I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. I’ll see you soon.

What is happening right then. So if your back hurts it’s what’s happening. If you’re angry it’s what’s happening. I get a lot of pushback from people who say, “I’m scared to go look at that. I’d rather just do affirmations right away and I want to be positive.” Of course I know you believe more than anybody in the world about being positive, but why is it important to take a look at what’s happening?

Louise: Well, then it’s very important that you start forgiving because forgiveness sort of wipes the slate clean so that other things can come in.

Louise: I love and adore of myself or I love and approve of myself. That’s to me like the mirror work that I do. We’ll have people do it also, is to look in the mirror and look into your own eyes. Start with something really simple but difficult like, “I love you. I really, really love you.” Most people can’t do that at all because it’s just too painful. They have all these messages back here that say, “You’re no good. Besides, your makeup isn’t on right or, “You forgot to shave today,” or something. But once you can do that, if you do it over and over again for awhile it’s like you connect on a different level with that inner child who’s been waiting for years and years and years for you to acknowledge it. Something happens, and I couldn’t tell you what it is, but I have learned that people who do their affirmations in front of a mirror make much quicker progress than other people.

Nick: Yeah, I hear that.

Louise: It pushes through.

Nick: What I can see, it brings up so much stuff. What people can do when they do that mirror work, if something specific comes up like, “I’m not good enough about this,” after they’re done doing the work they can go and tap on those issues. So sort of combine both together. You do the mirror work it brings up the things that are bubbling. Or maybe you can even tap in front of the mirror. Maybe that will be the next innovation, to tap and say affirmations in front of the mirror.

Louise: You know you have an angel. We all have angels, and you have a special angel that is your own.
In spite of all that you have gone through this angel has taken care of you and protected you all your life.
You can call on this angel now to help dissolve the rest of this issue.
The rest of this issue, this issue of pain and fear, or being terrorized by life,
this issue of being helpless and not being able to have anybody take care of you,
feeling all alone and frightened.
But you have an angel now, and you know this angel is here. This angel is with you.
This angel will protect you for the rest of your life.
It will dissolve any issues that you’ve been through.
It’s time for you to be free now.
You can run and dance and play, and be who you were meant to be and be who you were born to be.
You are safe now. It’s safe to feel safe. It’s safe to be safe.
It’s safe to let go.
There’s a great freedom and a great love surrounds you, and all is truly well in your life now. And so it is.